Magnetic and Electric Field Instrumentation Calibration Facilities.

An electric E and magnetic H field generator facility was designed, developed, fabricated, and installed to provide a means of calibrating instrumentation to measure the E and H fields of simulated nuclear electromagnetic pulses. The E field transducer is a large parallel plate capacitor, and the H field transducer is a modified Helmholtz coil. A set of variable inductors were developed and used in conjunction with fixed capacitors to permit continuous frequency variation of the facility. The facility operation consists basically of charging high-voltage capacitors and then discharging them through inductive or resistive loads by triggered spark-gap switches to produce the desired time-varying voltages and currents. Both fields can be generated in either the continuous wave or the pulse mode. With frequencies between 50 Hz and 10 MHz, the E field transducer can produce field intensities up to 100 kV per meter and with frequencies between 500 Hz and 1 MHz, the H field transducer can produce field intensities up to 20 gauss. A high degree of spatial field uniformity was exhibited throughout 1-meter-long cylindrical test volumes. Author